About Patricia Sykes

Patricia Sykes is a poet and librettist. Her poems have won the John Shaw Neilson, Tom Collins, and Newcastle poetry prizes and her books shortlisted in the Mary Gilmore, Anne Elder and Judith Wright Awards. Her collaborations with composer Liza Lim have been performed at festivals in Melbourne, Sydney, Brisbane, Paris, Berlin, Moscow and Huddersfield. She was Asialink Writer in Residence, Malaysia, 2006. Her most recent collection is The Abbotsford Mysteries (Spinifex Press, 2011).

Strange temples vie their architects. Outside in the territory of birds a carpenter is constructing a roof as if today, tomorrow, legs might escape into wings. We nest, we break open, we give birth to what we feed. In the …

Stepping from white into black from day into night. Called out by who knows what. The night jasmine perhaps, the fireflies, the rising coolness of the water tank. All day a folding of facts, thoughts, wants, packing a new history …